


Singing in the Dead of Night

by LSDAndKizuki



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prison, semi-accurate geographical descriptions of liverpool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSDAndKizuki/pseuds/LSDAndKizuki
Summary: On the 18th June, 1963, John viciously attacked DJ Bob Wooler, for insinuating homosexual relations between him and his manager, Brian Epstein.On the 21st of the same month, assault charges were filed. The general public took interest, as Bob explained the circumstances of the beating.Three months later, long after the case had settled shakily in his favour, an incriminating picture of John was released to the press by an anonymous source.A line of tolerance had been crossed. After this point, there was no crossing back over it.





	Singing in the Dead of Night

Brian Epstein told the three remaining Beatles on the 21th June, 1964, that he thought some time off would do them good, and that a hiatus was definitely in order. He neglected to add vocally that the hiatus would probably last forever, but the message came through perfectly with his face, and catching sight of this, Paul quickly tried to weigh up which birthday had been worse for him, ’63 or ’64. He decided that the answer was ’64: at least John had been there in ’63, even if his presence did mainly consist of career-destroying violence.

After Brian and the others had left, and the sun had slipped out of sight, Paul drank alone on his 22nd birthday, in the mild summer of the Ashers’ back garden. Over the glazed rear of his bottle he could see the glimmer of the evening star, low-hanging and overripe, a fruit he could just reach his arm out and snatch. His limbs were too tired for any of that now; they’d had their fruit, they’d worked for it, and he could not motivate them to try again. He took another long sip. It was an interesting kind of drunk, the one he was approaching. It was slow, stultifying… Relatively unfamiliar. Drinking alone was not Paul’s _modus operandi,_ and usually with other people the alcohol fired him up, rather than watered him down, as if it knew there were souls to impress. Jane was calling him, a disembodied voice from their disembodied front door. “Paul. Come to bed, Paul.”

He supposed that he was in a drowsy enough state that he could conceivably come to bed, and there wasn’t anything left for him to do other than what other people told him, so Paul heaved himself off the deckchair with a sigh. He straightened his back, had one last glare at the stars, and slunk back into his home. He finished the single worst year of his life since his fourteenth with Jane’s soft long hair rustling against his own, and her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and the memory of George’s voice a sad little wisp in the air: _you should talk to him._ The stillness of the night allowed the ringing of the town church-bells to reach their bedroom, an ecstasy of descending arpeggios, until the count: one, two, three, four… At the twelfth stroke, Jane must have felt the stiffening of Paul’s back, because she squeezed him hard and whispered firmly, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” said Paul at normal speaking volume, jerking the atmosphere out of its slumber. “It’s his. I hate him.”

The arms withdrew, only by a fraction. “For attacking Bob Wooler?”

Paul closed his eyes, and wished sleep would come more quickly. “No. But for everything after.” It was easier to say this than address the specifics of _everything after,_ but the memory of that candid snapshot still surfaced in Paul’s mind: John draped like human fabric over a disturbingly pliant and relaxed-looking Brian, his mouth sucking his jaw so obscenely, and his hands in _such_ inappropriate positions – almost as if they’d been deliberately posing for the camera _._ The wide crease halfway down the picture from where the newspaper had been folded in two: a reminder that the cursed image was sitting on the doorstep of every family in Britain.

 _No. Stop thinking about it._ If this night was a blanket, it was bunched uncomfortably tight around Paul’s body, an eiderdown that incubated and would allow no rest. He was not accustomed to drinking such quantities by himself, all in the quiet darkness, and it was having an effect on his ability to relax. On nights like these, he had his tactics for getting a good sleep: he closed his eyes and went into the happiest part of his mind. It was a constant concert over there, he and the band playing for an insatiable crowd, every one of the faces in front of him lit up with excitement and love, and good music swirling aromatically in the air. He was giddy from the joy of it all, the thrill of vibrating strings against his finger, the nameless guitar tracks clattering around him, and the euphoric harmonies – and it did not matter who, or what, what mattered was simply the fact that there was great music –

Until a face became attached to one of Paul’s fantastical band, and the bliss collapsed. With the face there also came the voice, loud and confident in Paul’s ears, singing a third below and unfailingly in tune. _You know it’s up to you,_ John sang, _I think it’s only faaair…_

“Oh God,” Paul whispered, around a lump in his throat. “It’s really over, isn’t it?” He began to move about restlessly, rustling the sheets, trying to get cosy. The blankets felt far too hot all of a sudden. Jane’s arms retreated; “stop that,” she murmured, three-quarters on her way to sleep.

He hoped that the noise might drown out John’s singing, but the final words rang out unbroken and clear: … _Apologise to her! Because she loves you…_

John had apologised, in his way. It was just that his apology, like nearly all of his exploits, had harmed more than it had helped, and Paul was certainly in no mood to accept the gesture. No, he did not hate John for attacking Bob Wooler, although he had, nearer the event. It was not just the fact that John had effectively accelerated his career into a car-crash with a few drunken punches, but that he’d seen fit to do it all on Paul’s birthday.

Well, three days before his birthday. Either way, however indirectly, here he was: ruining the day for Paul once again.

He was breathing shakily, and could feel the throat tightening. Tears would be next. He forced his body to relax.

The band in Paul’s head was still on stage. They were finishing the number, and the final suspended chord held long and true. The crowd was beside itself, screaming itself raw with appreciation, and after their bow John looked over at Paul, glee twinkling in his eye. Despite his conscious anger, on this stage, Paul could only be swept up in the joy again and grin back. He swam down to his fantasy, or his memory, leaving the dark midnight world behind him. What hiatus down here? What assault charges, what queer scandal? There was only the endless gig, and the endless pulsing good-times-machine. He did not have to leave it. Over the din of screams he could not hear the count-in, but he watched John’s mouth form the words, one-two-three-four, and instinctively began to play the bassline. Titles had less meaning in this fantasy world, but he knew the tune, and the words _well she was just 17_ flowed from him naturally.

Behind closed, drowsy eyelids, Paul lost himself in the song and, on the long and winding road to sleep, he forgot that it was ripped and burned, and abandoned to the buzzards.

The next day, in the mid-afternoon, Paul received a call. He did not think about what he was doing as he picked up the phone and mustered up a dry greeting. When John’s voice returned it, through the mind-blank, Paul managed to hang up the phone without another word. It took him a moment to realise that John was most likely calling about the hiatus, and before he could think of his next move, the phone rang again. Paul let it ring insistently for a few moments, until the anticipation became worse than the thought of conversation, and he responded.  

“John.”

“Macca! What-”

“No,” Paul cut him off.  

“No –? Look, Paul, I heard from Brian about the split, and I wanted to –”

“If you want to talk about that, call George or Ringo,” Paul said in one breath.

“… What’s this, Paul? Why d’ya hang up on me?”

 “I don’t want you to call this number,” Paul said calmly, and by some miracle managed to hang up before John could get in another word.

He sat down on the staircase and took deep breaths. The absolute last thing he wanted to do at that moment was talk to John. But hearing his voice spoke to the subconscious part of him that still dreamt of playing on stage side by side, and that part of him screamed out in longing. Paul sank into it without even thinking; he could call him back. Invite him over for a jam perhaps. They could play together again, and they could forget all the nasty business of the past year, and Paul could feel whole again, if he saw John smile at him just _once._

Only, that wouldn’t happen. Even the subconscious knew this. Paul would invite John over, and on the off-chance that John accepted the invitation, their meeting would not go well. Paul could just see it: John’s taut face throughout the whole affair, the two of them desperately trying to write something good together, tiny bumps between them setting them off into shouts, and almost certainly some ugly low blows exchanged. He imagined the music breaking into John’s expression twisted to a sneer. That, Paul thought, would be worse than pretending John didn’t exist. All thoughts of John did nowadays was hurt him, even if all he wanted was John back.

 _Besides,_ Paul’s conscious mind took over again, _I hate him._ There was also that.

Not trusting John not to call back again, he decided to block him more passively, and dialled the first number he could think of. He hung onto the tone like a lifeline, praying that he was indoors. If there was any voice Paul could stand to hear at this time, it was not John’s, but his _real_ brother’s.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mike.”

“Gosh, Paul!… Been a while, hasn’t it?” There were soft sounds in the background, on Mike’s side of the line, a female voice. His brother had found a girl at last, then? It was good to focus on these things, and get out of the questioning phase as soon as possible.

“Yeah, sorry about that… It’s been, you know, a little rough lately.”

“Well, you don’t say. How’re’you doing, then?”

“I-alright, I suppose, all things considered. There aren’t any hard feelings. That is, I mean, well, we’re splitting up, but –”

“You’re serious?”

Jane entered the room; Paul glanced up at her pitying face against the lurid wallpaper. Mike could not see him, but he schooled his expression to neutrality nonetheless. “It’s only a hiatus.” Jane nodded at him, then vanished from the room again.

“So you’re getting back together again at some point?” There was real concern in Mike’s voice, and not only sympathetic concern at Paul’s plight. There was some of the star-struck shock Paul would have expected from a fan, and he supposed that made sense, although it strangely had not occurred to him. The Beatles ending was to him so much a personal tragedy of lost potential and companionship, that it seemed odd for the rest of the world to feel the same way about it. The news was not public yet, but it soon would be. Paul was assaulted by a surreal image of the Cavern, its cramped and airless stage left vacant, a gaggle of confused and abandoned girls huddled in the alcove. He’d never stand there with his mates again, dripping with sweat, condensation and sex appeal. It was all he could do not to break down, just over that thought.

They’d been so close to cracking America, too.

“… Paul? You are, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said, too brusquely, “We’ll find out, won’t we? I just wanted to call to check up on how things’re with you, really.”

“Oh! Well, y’know, they’re great. Still at the barber’s. My group’s doing all right... That is, I mean, we’re not doing _terribly…_ ” Yes, that was guilt in his voice. Paul rolled his eyes.

“You been in touch with dad?” he asked, hoping that this was a conversation path free of booby traps.

“Yeah. About that.” Ah, apparently not. Paul could just see Mike standing there in their kitchen looking at his fingers tapping on the table, as if Paul’s eyes were there to avoid looking into. “He wants to see you quite badly. He’s heard about the stuff that happened with the band of course, and he’s quite upset that you didn’t call him, actually.”

“Which stuff? The stuff he’s reading in the papers, right?” Paul closed his eyes; a headache was coming on. Why could this sodding scandal not leave him _alone?_ “I’m sure he does want to have a word with me about some of those things. Seems I’ve got some bad influences in my life – would that be the _Thug Lennon_ or the _Poofter Lennon_ headline?”

“… Both? Paul, don’t be like that. He’s not pissed off or anything, he just wants to see you. He misses you. You’ve been away so long, and now he’s in Cheltenham and I’m at the barber’s so _I_ hardly see him.” The female voice he’d been hearing intermittently called something unintelligible; Mike responded to her in a hand-muffled voice. Paul waited, and considered. “Listen,” Mike said, “you said the Beatles are having a break, yeah? Well, come over. There’s no need for you to be in London now. It might do you some good to taste the Mersey air, as they say.”

The Mersey air. Paul looked around the heavy-set ornamented Asher home, and realised that Liverpool was just what he wanted. He could recuperate in his homeland; he would get his spirits back in the grimy docklands. “Yeah,” he said, “That sounds lovely.”

Paul did not receive any more calls from John that day, or the next. He knew this for a fact, having remained in the Asher home for the entirety of the two days. Every time he made to leave the house, a breeze floated in his face, just a mite too cold, and his motivation was flushed out of him. He spent a good amount of time on the padded window seat, facing the back garden. He was becoming fascinated by a blue tit nest balanced precariously in the acer. When one watched it for such stretches of time as Paul did, a good amount of activity was visible in it. The nest was not finished, and the tit would fly into view of the window frame with pieces of budded twigs pinched in its beak, or clumps of leaves. Bit by bit, through frantic bustling, the creature’s home was built up, padded and fortified. However well-made it was, Paul could not help noticing that the position was tactically a foolish one. A strong gust of wind would see all that hard work blown out of the safety of the tree; already it wobbled.

Jane came up behind him, and sat with her legs either side of his back on the window seat. “Let’s go out for lunch,” she said. “I don’t like seeing you cooped up in here. It’s not healthy.” Paul made a non-committal noise. Jane leaned her head forwards to rest beside his, and it was a comforting, if tiresome weight on his shoulder. “You writing something?”

He had his notebook resting on his thighs. Watching the blue tit had got him thinking about bird-song, wondering how he might represent it through guitar music. It would have to be acoustic, made up of short, quick chords, perhaps in arpeggios, or a scale. There were no words on the page, just vaguely sketched chord charts, and abstract musical diagrams. “Yeah, a little.”

As if a switch was flicked, a tune suddenly fluttered bird-like out of the senseless shapes on the paper, into Paul’s head. He hummed it, feeling for words to put to it. It had a _Till There Was You_ sensibility, light and airy, and – Paul was more than a little spooked to realise this – decidedly different from anything he’d ever come up with before, with John by his side. It felt new, experimental, almost futuristic.

In that moment, all negative thoughts were scrubbed out, in the wake of this exciting revelation. He itched to grab his guitar and immediately start figuring out the chords, but Jane’s arms were now coming over his shoulders, anchoring him in place. The energy was coming back into him, though, as he imagined laterally how the song might sound, how John would react when he played it for the others –

Oh. Paul pulled away from Jane sharply. “What’s wrong?” she asked. He looked back at her, and hating himself for the thought, thought that she was far less attractive now than she had been when they had begun going out. Not physically, but there was a lacking in her facial expression. To be fair to her, it was a lacking he seemed to see everywhere, and had been doing so for months.

He swallowed the thought, swallowed the ache needling in his chest. “Nothing. Let’s go out.”

They ate in an Italian place buried in Soho. Over a sharing plate of spaghetti and meatballs, Jane tried to tell Paul how to behave. She told him how sad it made her to see him so unenergetic, so unwilling to do anything, and studies had shown melancholia was supposed to be cured with outdoor activity, you know, and her parents weren’t exactly thrilled to be housing someone who could hardly find it in themselves to get out of bed, and was Paul even listening to her?

“What do you want me to do?” he shot back. “Just get over it?”

She looked down at her share of spaghetti, her mouth a funny shape, as if she’d just swallowed something too large. “No, that’s not it at _all,_ ” she said, “I’d like it if you stopped avoiding it, though. Either stop avoiding it, or do something else. But don’t just do _nothing,_ Paul.”

His time for “avoiding it” was limited anyhow. There was only a limited amount of time before news of the Beatles’ disbandment – sorry, _hiatus –_ was released to the press. One final sensationalist existence, and then there would be silence. Until that day, Paul attempted to take Jane at her word, and did other things. He helped around the house and cooked several meals. He talked to his father, and pencilled in a date for his trip to Liverpool. He went out for runs. He did not lay so much as a finger on his guitar, because each time he thought of writing and playing, he thought of John. And thoughts of John immediately turned into thoughts of hatred, so why bother wasting energy?

At night, things were different. They were dreams, but Paul was inclined to call them visions. They had the ring of reality about them, despite being in themselves bizarre and surreal. He saw the four of them united again, older and adorned with facial hair, not smiling, but distantly content. He saw strange coloured suits, flowers, a haze of brilliant knowledge and good feeling, doors unlocking inside his head, and guitar licks the like of which he’d never heard before, and never would in the real world. Above all, he saw John, eyes half-closed, no longer the devil-may-care youngster, but still with him, hand in hand and changing the world. He woke from the dreams with his arms stretched out, clawing at nothing. In the darkness he was overcome with regret and envy of a thing he would never have.

In the real world, John tried to talk to him. He rang several times, and Paul responded, but the conversations did not last long.

“Why are you avoiding me?” There was a desperate note in John’s voice, as there always seemed to be in these calls. This time Paul was struck by the directness of the statement, almost enough to tell him the real reasons.

 _Because it’s your fault. Because you betrayed me, my closest friend. Because you never told me about you and Brian. Because you shut me out when I_ _needed you._  “I’m not avoiding you, John,” Paul said, “I just have other things to do, you know?”

“Fuck, Paul,” John said, sounding wrecked, and Paul could not find the sympathy he knew was needed, and where else could the conversation go if John had nothing to offer?

Talking to John did depress him, but that was nothing compared with the emptiness which filled him as he put the phone down. It felt like losing all over again: the loss of limb that was John made itself known. Perhaps if these calls had come in earlier, before the hiatus, Paul would have been more receptive. But these days, he was tormented by the men in colourful suits at night, and the sounds of a thousand tunes playing at once, doing things to music that could only ever exist in dreams – or, as his dreams whispered, in a different future, one which hadn’t been fucked up. And the only person to blame for the fucking up was John, however unfair that might seem. Paul knew he was selfish, but these facts were enough to make him cut John out of his life, out of the wound left by all that wasted potential. 

News of the Beatles breakup reached around the same level of sensation as the assault that had started it all. The back page of _The Mirror,_ again, and the feeling of an old sofa huffing out a storm of dust when whacked. The dying gasp of something that everybody knew was already dead. Paul was out running on Wimble Street, the morning of the press release. The asphalt kicked back at his running shoes, propelling him forwards, and everything was low, wind and sound alike. He felt no eyes on him. He only jogged, running away from the Asher home into Marylebone, between the equally spaced domesticated trees by the curb, and the joyless Georgian house-fronts. Jane showed him the paper when he returned, breathless and perspiring. “Yeah?” he snapped at her, knowing it was unfair, but unable to feel anything but sheer outrage at the picture of John, George, Ringo and himself falling all over each other in smiles and musical instruments, against the Cavern backdrop, frozen helpless in joy, with the callous words to their right: _Beatles over for good._

He was reminded of a time when he was in primary school, when he and Mike had fallen out. He could not remember the reason for the argument, only Mike’s red face screaming at him, and feeling unspeakably horrible. He had a surreal vision of himself going outside and climbing a tree to get away from the feeling. It may have only lasted a day, that breaking up of friendship, but to a six-year-old mind it was an age of agonies he had never comprehended, the chief of them guilt. Paul showered after his run and felt the same thing all over again, only turned inside out, for the world to inspect. Imagine coming home from that tree to find not only his brother, but all the faces of the neighbourhood frowning at him for messing up.

It was a mercy that the year’s events had, after the initial furor, pushed down the Beatles’ visibility by over half. There were not as many people inspecting that inside-out mess as there might have been. That was not to say that there was no response to the bubble-burst; Paul and George conferred on the number of distressed letters they’d received. To Paul, they were an abstract measure of how much he mattered to the general public, as he was not frequently accosted in the streets, but the letters still came in intermittently, in bursts or in a weak stream. “I get a few queer letters still,” George said, as if the word had no greater meaning now than it had ever done, “people expressing their extreme dislike at such indecency, people giving their support for such bravery. What will it take for them to realise it’s _not me?_ ”

“Too right,” Paul agreed, smiling. They were having tea at George’s, a simple social call. A guitar was leaning content-looking against the armchair, delightfully playable, and an elephant in the room. Paul too received the odd queer letter. They tended to be more direct, also making assumptions: _go join your fag boyfriend in jail, it’ll be you next,_ and _were you and Lennon ever sexually involved._

_John’s hands over him in entirety, his lips searching his body hungrily and affectionately in one, the nauseating mixture of ecstasy and panic that this was so much better than anything he’d ever done with a girl, the fallout in the morning, telling himself for months and months the same thing he’d told John on that morning, that it was just sexual frustration, and then the grainy image of John with his hand down Eppy’s trousers broadcast for the world to see –_

Paul was determined not to let them get to him, but he had also been determined to keep John in the band. That didn’t stop him from failing miserably at both _. Sexually involved._ And just _what_ business was that of some over-eager fan? Paul was almost tempted to write back, for the outrage he felt on reading some of the letters. _Dear Kerry Jacobson: thank you for the kindly worded letter. You’re rather a curious girl! To answer your question: we had some rather raunchy times together in Paris, and a little in Hamburg, but for the most part, John has kept his hands nice and far away from my cock. As you probably heard, he was far more interested in our manager Brian Epstein. Why not ask him for more details? I’m sure he’ll happily oblige you. Sincerely, Paul. PS: I wouldn’t pay John’s fooling around much mind. If you ask me doesn’t really care who it is what he does, if he’s horny! You can ask Cynthia more about that one._

Paul shuddered at the callousness of the thought, glad that George was not looking at his face, as if the meanness could manifest there. But George was looking at the guitar, with a look of definite longing, and Paul felt suddenly so hungry to play that he forgot his train of thought completely. “You got another of those?” he asked George, softly, not daring to break the spell. George’s eyes caught his, uncertain but eager, and Paul felt exactly the same; “Go on, get it.”

George returned to the sitting room firmly clutching the neck of an acoustic guitar. As Paul took its comfortable weight in his hands he remembered the blue-tit melody he’d come up with – or rather, he did not remember it. He remembered that it had existed, and that it had been like a peak behind the curtain of reality, but he could not remember how it went. He frowned, and tried to put his mind where it had been that day, picking strings experimentally. George pulled a face at him. “What’s that?” he asked, not unimpressed, but certainly not impressed. The tune was gone forever.

Once again, Paul swallowed down a crest of despair. “Nothing, just testing the strings.” They shifted into position, sitting on the same sofa, their bodies angled slightly inwards, and began to jam. They blasted through _Mean Woman Blues,_ barely needing to focus on the track they’d been plucking since they’d met. Paul took the licks and solos; George thumped his guitar in place of handclaps. He was smiling broadly, and Paul thought smugly that he was probably delighted to play this song, finally, with a guitarist who could keep up with skill that matched his own. Paul pictured John hammering away through the chords in ’57, himself encouraging him, yet feeling just the slightest bit embarrassed for him when he stumbled.

The pleasantness of the playing was only diminished by Paul’s slight slip-ups with the lyrics. After all, he and George were used to singing the _oohs_ and _aahs_ on this one, while John would belt out Elvis’ lines in his own scraggly drawl, catching Paul’s eye at points in the song, leaving him unable to stop smiling through the backing vocals. By the time they had finished the song, John was still firmly embedded in Paul’s mind, and he broached the topic. “Has John spoken to you since the hiatus?”

George nodded. “I filled him in. He said you turned him away.”

“I did.”

“He doesn’t sound too good,” George said quietly, “He’s living with some guy in a flat, back home.”

“Some guy?” Paul frowned. “Isn’t he back with Mimi?”

George fiddled with the guitar pegs with his left hand, his right hand softly teasing the strings. “No. Mimi isn’t talking to him apparently. She… Wasn’t pleased by his actions.” He scoffed. “I hardly knew the woman, but John always made it seem like she doted on him. Hope they sort it out, the two of them…”

“I don’t really care,” Paul said, and the words sounded weak to his own ears.

The guitar was laid on the floor with a low musical cough. “When was the last time you two really spoke?”

Paul looked down at his knees. “You mean face to face?” His face was starting to feel rather hot. “Too long ago.”

_The prison stay was perfunctory, really. Paul still wasn’t clear on what exactly had landed John with a five week sentence, the assault or the queerness, but he was willing to bet that it was the latter. Unstable and violent were monikers an up-and-coming pop singer from Liverpool could bear with little difficulty. Unstable, violent and a poofter to boot? There was only so much one could be expected to take. Brian was waiting outside the visitation room, free with a warning. He was full of all sorts of advice and reassurance for John and the group, but had yet to say anything on his own feelings in all of it. Paul would have pitied him, but at this moment he had his hands full, left alone on the other side of the table from John._

_“We were in Torremolinos,” said John. He grimaced. “I don’t know why you can’t just have Brian tell you the details. He was there too, you know.” His voice was dull._ _It was alarming to see him so subdued, so unwilling even to communicate. Paul could not remember a time when John’s sorrow had translated to anything but fits of passion, shouting and kicking and crying, perhaps some acerbic coldness, but never this._

_“I want it from you.”_

_“Of course you do.” John’s elbows were on the table, and he stared at his twiddling thumbs, apparently unable to meet Paul’s face. “Brian knew a place down there. The only queer club in all of Spain and he found it.”_

_It was odd to picture straight-laced Brian hanging out in bars of his own free will. Paul wondered if John was twisting the story intentionally. Maybe he genuinely thought the whole thing was Brian’s fault; Paul was no stranger to his talent for self-delusion. He did not bring it up with John, deciding that it was not the_ who _that mattered, but the_ what _and_ why.

_“We took a ride from Barcelona, just for a few days,” John continued. “That picture must have been taken in the club. I do remember seeing a number of cameras… You get all sorts around there. People wanting to take little bits of other people’s lives home with them…” He smiled a little at that, and Paul could not fathom why. Yet another thing he did not understand about John in these times, which drove him a little more insane every day. “We didn’t… Y’know, we fooled around a bit. Nothing serious about it, at the time. I was curious; he was…” It took John a moment to find the correct word here, “Hungry.”_

_“So why is it a big deal now?”_

_“We were in Barcelona,” John said wryly. “Do you know how far a journey that is to travel, just to get to a queer club?”_

_They were quiet in the room. There was the sound of a conjugal visit a few meters away from them, made up of murmurs and prayer-like wishes and promises:_ you’ll write? Every day. You’ll tell my mum how I am? Always. I love you. I love you too. This’ll all be over soon.

_“It’ll be all right,” Paul was saying, and his mouth felt tired of the words. “Trust me John, it will. This’ll all die down. You’ll be out soon anyway, won’t you?”_

_John nodded, though his head was still bowed. Paul willed him to look him in the eye. “Hey,” he raised his voice, trying to get a full reaction from him. “Listen. Once you’re out, let’s go somewhere nice. Somewhere away from it all. Just us, yeah, maybe the other two if they’re interested. Sound good?” John finally looked up at him, and no, his eyes were not sad in the way they had been after Julia, and after the court case, but shuttered. There was nothing in them, or at least nothing being shown by John. Paul pressed on, pushing past the anxiety. “Paris again,” he said. “You know they’re kinder about… y’know, there. Even better than Torremolinos, I bet. Certainly much more to do over there. John, say something, please.”_

_John briefly looked up at him to give him a confused glower, and croak a response. “What do you want to hear, Paul?” It was biting and unyielding, but it was a response Paul was familiar with, and this alone encouraged him. What did he want to hear? Mainly he wanted to hear what he was saying himself. Tell me it’ll be all right, John. Tell me you won’t get eaten up by this; tell me you’ll come home. Paul said none of this, but he kept on steadfastly looking at John, a favour John still seemed unwilling to return. He picked at the edge of his loose-hanging uniform. Without the magnet of eye-contact, Paul’s eyes were drawn to John’s arms poking thinly out from the cotton. Were his hands shaking? As if reading Paul’s mind, John quickly folded his arms across his chest and delivered the blow with cold accuracy. “I’m not coming back to the band, or you lot. Go with George, or somebody.”_

_“What?” The word didn’t feel large enough to be heard, but the rest of the world was silent. It certainly felt silent to Paul, after hearing John’s statement. “You don’t…”_

_“I mean it, Paul,” John said, his tone still barbed, “As soon as I’m out of here, I’m moving away. It’s what’s best.”_

_Paul could hardly speak through the shock, and outrage at this. “How do you know what’s best_ , _” he hissed. “You haven’t exactly been the brains behind the_ best _decisions of late. What’s best is us back together again, and putting all of this shit behind us!”_

_“Well, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that one.”_

_Paul shook his head, furious beyond speaking. “I don’t understand,” he managed. “It’s not that big of a deal. There’s hardly even any_ proof –”

 _“Oh, come off it, Paul, they_ know!” _He no longer sounded offhand or cold, but quite desperate. “There have been… Others. There’re even stories coming out about Stu and me.” His voice bent slightly at this. “Be thankful they’ve got nothing on_ you _yet.”_

_Something finally seemed to make sense. “That’s what you’re worried about? That people’ll think we’re queer?”_

_“Well, considering our history, it’s a fair assumption, don’t you think?” They had shrunk their voices to whispers now, and as Paul looked nervously around the room for potential eavesdroppers, he was painfully aware of how much he was proving John’s point._

_Their history. Paul had never thought to call it that. It was a knot of confused experiences he had no idea how to tackle, so he left them alone. At the time, sweating in their Paris hotel room in the dead of night, their actions had felt rather natural. No, they had felt supremely natural, in fact they had felt more natural and perfect than anything else Paul had done at a similar hour – and it was for this reason that he could not bear to address it. He changed the subject. “Alright, so you don’t want to go off alone with me. Fair enough. But you don’t have to leave the band, John,” he pleaded. “Come on, mate, what’s the point if you’re not with us?”_

_John rubbed the back of his neck. “You’ll be better off than with me.”_

_Paul tried to swallow through a tight throat. “So, that’s it? You’re just leaving us.”_

_“Haven’t you noticed that I keep landing you all in the shit?”_

_A voice announced that they had five minutes left to say what needed to be said, five minutes to make the most important man in the world stay with him. How on earth did Paul end up having to explain that any situation with John, however shameful, was preferable to one without? Panicked, Paul slammed his hands on the table, surprising John into finally looking him in the eye. “Who are you?” he blurted. “Since when have you cared what the stiffs think of us? It didn’t stop you from going to Spain with Brian, did it? Why let it stop you now? Don’t you realise that I –_ we – _need you more than ever now?”_

_Paul waited for John to look the way he’d always done. He waited for that sharpness to re-enter the face, that drive, just an inch of that pugnacious spirit even. It did not, and John only sighed again, his eyes facing the ceiling, averting Paul’s again. “I’m just tired of it all, Macca.”_

_“Tired –?” It was a conscious effort on Paul’s part not to reach over the table and grab John by the wrists. Instead he put his palms to his forehead, fisted his hair and stifled a scream._

_“What’s wrong?”_ What’s wrong, he asks. _The tightness in Paul’s throat was feeling suspiciously similar to a sob; with supreme force of will, he forced it down. “Paul, I’m not doing this because I want to,” John sounded genuinely like he was pleading. “I just think I’ve caused you guys enough trouble as it is. You can keep on playing together without me. You know you’re ten times the guitarist I am, and George too…” Paul lowered his hands, to see John catch himself before touching Paul’s arm._

_“You bastard,” Paul said, his voice hoarse. “You’re killing us and you don’t even care. Just ‘cause you’re scared.” John’s face froze. Paul sniffed, a wet sniff, but there were no tears. “Just like you, Lennon. You fuck everything up for us and you won’t stick around for the fallout…” He glanced at his watch; still a minute left. “Now what?”_

_For a moment, John was silent, seemingly floored by Paul’s accusation. He drew his arms closer to his body and hunched his shoulders, looking so hopeless that Paul was close to taking it back, but then he blinked his face into neutrality before answering in that awful, dulled tone: “We say good-bye.”_

_“Right,” Paul nodded harshly. “Good-bye for now, then.” Because he could not stop himself from leaving it a little ajar, and could not bear closing it all shut, not when there was so much still to say, and when John still had only looked at him twice throughout their meeting. He stood up silently to leave and did not look back at John for a moment, though he could feel him looking at his retreating back. It was a talent John had always had. He would look at Paul, and Paul could be looking the other way but still he’d know, and he’d look back at him, and John would have been waiting for him to meet his eye so he could smile at him, and Paul would smile back, all for no reason other than to check on each other and look at each other, just to feel even happier for an indulgent second –_

_He heard the cell doors closing a few minutes after leaving the visitation room. Ca-clink._

_When John was released a week later, Paul did not greet him. John did not call, nor did he tell Paul where he might reach him. They saw each other next at the meeting at which John Lennon removed himself from the Beatles contract, and exchanged the minimum number of words. Until Brian announced the hiatus three months later, these were the only words they spoke to one another._

Paul did breathe in the Mersey air on arriving at the scraggly and uneven docklands of Liverpool. It was a wretched and heady smell, very homely. Jane had been at the station when Paul left, gazing prettily but dispassionately at him, and Mike was at the station to pick him up. Paul caught a glimpse of his reflection in the train window just before he left; it was sitting ghost-like beside his brother’s pink and clean face. He hugged Mike, and would not let him take his suitcase. “Barber’s treating me well,” Mike chatted, while Paul inhaled his home town. “Dad’s only here on visit, to see both of us, really. It’s funny being the family breadwinner for once. Speaking of which, what do you feel like for supper? I’ve learnt all sorts of recipes since you and Dad left. You name it, I’ll cook it. Or we could go out together. My treat.”

He was firing sentence after sentence at Paul, apparently eager to do all the talking, so that Paul wouldn’t have to tell him how _he_ was doing. Paul only appreciated it. He smiled, nodded and said, “I’d much rather eat at home, thanks. Dad’s there, is he?”

“Yes.” The bus stopped a couple of miles north of Forthlin road. They walked down the long stretch of pavement, between the Calderstones parks. “He’s so happy you’re coming, you know. How long’s it been?” Once on the road, walking behind Mike, Paul was pleasantly surprised to realise that he did not need to follow him to know the way home. His feet remembered the street patterns they’d walked a hundred times. The asphalt did not kick at his feet here, or scuff his suitcase. It all welcomed him. “Home sweet home,” Mike said, as they were turning into the road. “Ah, look who’s here!”

Jim was standing, arms folded, on the short lane in front of number 20. He was smiling – a true, unburdened smile. It was almost enough to make Paul weep there and then. Here was his true family, who didn’t look at Paul and immediately see the Beatle scandal. They were smiling at him, cooking for him, making him feel at home again, and reminding him that he had in fact had a purpose before he started playing music with John. He’d been a son and a brother. He embraced his father, and although they were almost the same size now, he felt more protected and safe in these arms than he had in Jane’s. “We’re all back together,” Jim said, a great murmur vibrating through Paul’s body too, as they embraced. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

The whole thing was a retreat; that was the idea of it. He wasn’t thinking about a single event of the previous year, only those of the here and now, and those of his childhood, when he answered the phone three days after arriving in Liverpool.

“Hello?”

“Mike? That you? It’s John again. ‘M sorry to keep calling like this. George said Paul was coming up for a bit. Is he going to be staying with you? I won’t bother you at home or anything like that. Just want to know –”

“Do you take pleasure,” Paul ground out, “in following me around and making me life a misery the whole time?”

“… Bloody hell.”

“Hm.” It did not escape Paul’s notice that there seemed to be godly powers forcing him to continue talking to John Lennon, even when he left his house without telling him. It occurred to him for the first time that by coming up to Liverpool to get away from it all he’d brought himself geographically closer to John – and wasn’t that some sort of metaphor for inevitability? Paul was sure he’d heard a fairy tale similar to his own situation; the John-figure was Death, he seemed to remember. Fitting.

“Well… If you’re there, I might as well get straight to what I wanted to say,” John said, and Paul gave him the benefit of the doubt, that the tremor in his voice was down to a weakness in the line. “I want to see you again. Let’s meet up.” Oh, the _presumptuousness._ It didn’t matter that just the words _let’s meet up_ were firing up all of Paul’s instinctive responses, and there was already excitement and longing pumping through him at the thought. It was the _principle._

“Sure.” Paul placed a thumb and forefinger tightly to his forehead. “Just pop over for supper, why don’t you. Maybe bring your guitar along. Bet Jim’ll be all sorts of pleased to see you around, not to mention how _I’ll_ feel.”

“I don’t want to come over to your place,” John said, “I want to talk to you in private.”

Paul took up the phone and sat against the table with it nestled in his lap. “Whatever you want to say to me, you can say it now,” he said. “There’s no one around.”

“No. I want to see you privately and in person.” Paul rolled his eyes.

“Some great man once said we don’t always get what we want in life.”

“ _Please,_ Paul,” John cried, and Paul was kept quiet for a moment by the sudden urgency in his tone. “Look, I’m sorry for whatever I did to make you so angry, but I can’t make it right unless you let me talk to you. Let me _see_ you.”

Paul was about to say that if John honestly _didn’t know_ what he had done to upset him, then he had problems far deeper than Paul could address, but the plea in John’s voice was real – and familiar, he realised. He closed his eyes and saw John behind them. Christ, all he wanted to do was see him, even if it would be to sock him one. He’d felt glum since the beginning of the affair; he’d felt glummer ever since John hadn’t been around. Why waste the opportunity to feel potentially less glum? “Where and when?”

“Strawberry Fields. Eleven.”

“And a reasonable hour is impossible because…?”

“No time in the day. And evenings I spend asleep or drinking, just the way I’ve adjusted meself. It’s at night that I’m really restless,” he explained. “Perfect time to be meeting you.”

As usual, then, the world was suited to John’s schedule before anyone else’s. Paul glanced up at the clock, glinting in the afternoon sun and announcing that it was 1:30. “You seem to have time now.”

John laughed, a single unsmiling syllable. “I’m on my lunchbreak. I’ve snuck off to a phone box to call you like this, and I really have to go soon… Are you on?”

Just to find out what’s going on with him, Paul thought. Just to catch up. See his face one more time. That’s all this is. “Yeah,” he huffed. “Fine. See you there.”

It was a 20 minute journey from Forthlin road to the dinky little park in Woolton, and Paul took his time on the walk. John could bloody well wait for him, if he insisted on meeting in the most convenient spot for him, but inconvenient for Paul… But, no, it wasn’t necessarily convenient for John, was it? If he was no longer living with Mimi but _some guy._ Why go back to Woolton, then? Pure nostalgia?

Strawberry Field’s red spidery gates were locked by the time Paul was out there, but he imagined that had not stopped John, so he would not be stopped himself. They were very climbable, and Paul had little difficulty hopping over and inside. It was a pleasant place by day, and naturally a horror show at night, and Paul had never quite understood John’s great love for the place. It had always been the town for him, for days out and rendezvous. Maybe it was just the closeness to Menlove Avenue which made it special; maybe Julia had taken John out for walks there. Paul ambled down its main path, unsure exactly of what he was supposed to do. He watched the benches dotted up and down the sides of the road. There were stragglers and vagrants lurking around, and shadows that Paul could not identify. He was beginning to wonder how he might find John, and if he would be recognisable in this light, when he heard the frenzied clicking of a lighter. John was sitting hunched over in the bench to Paul’s immediate right, the bottom of his face briefly lit up with a flame.

Paul’s heart skipped a beat. John’s hair had grown out to shoulder length, and he was certainly considerably thinner than he had been a year ago, but other than that there was a heart-breaking familiarity to all of this. Going out at night at sixteen years old with only one objective: to see John, to do anything in the world with him. John always waiting for him with tense body, having a smoke to pass the time. “Hey,” Paul whispered, because unfortunately his eyes were already beginning to well up. John’s eyes flickered up to meet Paul’s, and it did not matter that months had passed since seeing each other. Those eyes inside Paul’s, and Paul’s eyes inside John’s, created a magic he still didn’t understand. For a split second, Paul felt like he could do anything in the world, before longing and need took over that feeling, and he had to look away, to keep composure. “You got the name wrong,” he said, unable to think of anything else.

“Pardon?”

“The park. You said ‘Strawberry Fields’. But it’s called Strawberry _Field._ Just the one. This is your neighbourhood, not mine, and still –”

John was on his feet and hugging Paul before either knew what was happening. “Paul,” he exhaled, like the name meant everything to him, “I _missed_ you, mate.” John’s voice cracked, his hands tightening around Paul’s hood, and Paul could not do anything but hug him back as tight as he could. His anger balked in the face of how great it was to hold him again. When they pulled apart, Paul saw that John’s eyes were wet, and now he took a proper look at his face.

George had said he didn’t sound too good, and this showed on his face. It wasn’t just thin, but the skin looked far paler and more fragile than it had. John’s hands were in Paul’s, and they were shaking ever-so-slightly. The cigarette he’d been about to light was smoothly sandwiched between their palms. He peeled his hands away from John’s, ignoring how naked they felt in the open air. “Same to you. Shall we have a seat?”

“Yeah, alright…” John’s eyes had a vague, dreamy look, although he was for once wearing glasses. Paul was reminded of his visions of the colourful suits, and his good feelings were spiked once again. “Took you long enough to come find me again,” John said, jovially, though there was definitely accusation in it.

“I know. I’m sorry.” He sensed he ought to get that out of the way first. They had far more important things to discuss.

“Nothing in it. Why the change of heart?” All of a sudden John’s eyes flashed mischievously, behind dusty lenses. “You looking fer a good time, laddie?” he drawled, in high-pitched nasal Scouse, “I can work out a _highly_ reasonable fee for a face like yours.” He was keeping a straight face, staring Paul dead in the eye. Paul turned his head away and laughed into his lap.

It did seem odd – and concerning, come to think of it – that John, who hadn’t had a conversation with Paul in months should joke around – and about this, of all things! – but Paul was more than willing to go with it. “Perhaps so,” he said, haughtily. He went straight for the sordid, relishing the un-conservative nature of it, and oh, how free his words felt when John was the only one around to hear them. “Though I do not believe _my_ face is the one for sale.”  He looked back at John, and for a moment was struck all over again by his beauty, even in such a haggard state. Had two eyes ever gleamed so brightly and warmly from so distressed a face? He now smirked at Paul, and it was just like his happy dreams: he was swept up in the giddy delight of the moment, and forgot everything.

“It should be. You’d rake in cash _and_ birds,” John purred. Fancy that, after everything, John was flirting with him. It was impossible not to smile a little at the absurdity, if nothing else.

“And boys, apparently,” he replied, raising an eyebrow.

“They’d all be at risk if the power cut out, though.”

“And why would that be?”

“Heard this one has a habit of lighting the condom on fire for light and warmth.”

“You _pig,_ ” Paul shouted, smacking John on the arm, and finding it alarmingly non-resistant. “That was once, I was desperate, and you weren’t even there.”

John cackled, and Paul’s face was splitting with the width of his smile; how long ago had he smiled like this? “Oh, it’s just not fair,” John sighed, all dramatics. “The boy with the angel-face nearly burns down a club in Hamburg and gets off with a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, I, a poor misguided youth –”

“Of _23 years,_ you fucker –”

“Have one _minor_ slip-up in a marquee –”

“He was hospitalised, you know, and that was hardly the whole of it –”

“Put _one_ measly finger down a posh poof’s trousers, and I spend five weeks in custody. I tell you, the system’s corrupt.”

It was increasingly hard to laugh, but Paul was fascinated and delighted by the lightness of this conversation. Still, he tried to push it away from the direction it was heading. “How’ve you been, since all that? You, um. Heard from Cyn?” _Tasteful, Paul,_ he thought, _you really know just what to say._ John’s smile slipped, and Paul felt briefly like the worst man on the planet. Briefly.

“Yeah, actually,” John said. “She still wants some time off to… Think about things.” He scratched the back of his hand.

“She’ll come back ‘round,” Paul assured, although she would not. Besides, John could mope about it as much as he wanted; Paul knew there was a part of him relieved not to have to worry about his wife and child anymore. He was a selfish man in that way, and it was a lucky thing in this case. “And… You doing anything?”

“Got a job down at the docks. Lifting things, y’know.” Paul marvelled at this, recalling how high above John had seemed in those ‘50s days, when he took Paul to his semi-detached with his own room and inside toilet. It was hard to imagine that lad ever working at the docks to make ends meet – but then, Mimi wasn’t talking to her nephew now. He asked tentatively if John liked his job, and John replied with an unembellished “no.” He was sitting on his hands, bobbing on his side of the bench, not looking at Paul.

Paul tried to figure out how to broach the topic bothering him the most. “Is that why you haven’t been taking care of yourself?” _Again, McCartney,_ his conscience sneered, _master of subtlety._

John’s legs stopped bouncing. He sat stock-still. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean…” You look like shit. You’re thin as a rail. You absolutely stink of smoke and drink. “You don’t look so hot, is all I’m saying. Think nothing of it.”

This was of course too much to ask. “You know nothing about my life.” John’s face screwed up after saying this; he turned completely away this time, causing a bloom of anger in Paul. “Damn it, Paul,” he said, “I’m coping, all right? It’s not been easy, these past weeks, you know. I don’t need you judging me on top of all of it.”

“I care about you, you know,” Paul said, and wished he hadn’t when John finally did look at him, and was not smiling at all. His eyes were flint-like, his mouth was on the verge of curling into a sneer, the emotional shift was so sudden and violent, and it was just _awful_ to be on the receiving end of John’s acid rage. Paul was unaccustomed to it. His insides churned, but he sat steady, not shrinking back at all.

But all John hissed at him was, “Coulda fucking fooled me.” The words were enough, still, to lay him low. Paul felt the last bit of giddy humour putter out of him, as he exhaled shakily. He remembered suddenly that he had come to this place for a purpose, and it was not to avoid the issue with jokes, or to be shouted at. He looked at John’s face and tried to think what it might have been. It was probably, almost definitely about everything that had come to pass since John punched Bob Wooler’s lights out. Now though, eyeing his eyes, it seemed that there was something else, something far more important which he’d always known, but never dared to think. Even now, it was not certain. But what did he have to lose?

“I missed you too,” Paul got out, and then in a rush, “I love you.” He blinked in confusion at the words. They had come from nowhere. He blushed, opening his mouth to recant the statement, or at least justify it, but on looking at John again, he was unable to speak. He shook his head; it was out now, and so it seemed it had come true. The curtain was lifted, the punchline delivered, the final piece of the puzzle, all those clichés: his tongue had simply known before his brain.

John was frozen, and the plume of smoke from his ciggie curled directly upwards. “Don’t say that,” he muttered, his eyes wide and genuinely fearful. Paul swallowed. He didn’t think he had expected a confident declaration of love in return, but the blank denial was a definite slap. “Don’t do this. You can’t do that to me, not after all of this.”

It was a hard face to say no to at the best of times. Paul was tempted just to leave it there, push the whole thing aside, allow John to continue this fiction of steadiness, and ability to function in the after-period, but then he licked his lips, while looking at John’s and knew he had to stick to the path he’d started on. “You remember Paris?” he tried.

It seemed a bad choice at first. John’s eyes hardened. “You mean where you brushed me off?”

Paul flinched. “Yeah.” He had a point in all of this, he knew he did. He just needed to get John to see it. The Paris trip was so full of good memories, once they’d set aside that one awkward morning, and going back to it just to dig up the sour taste felt blasphemous. But necessary. “I… I didn’t know what was going on and I panicked.” It was a lame excuse, but one that he would never have to repeat. They would do it again, he was sure of it, and this time, he would not act as he did. He would stay, and keep the flame beautiful for as long as possible. “And then I saw you and Brian –”

“Like the rest of the fucking country,” John scoffed, but Paul was not to be deterred now by a little sardonicism from his closest friend, from the man he loved.

“And I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind,” he finished in a loud tone, aware of how similar he sounded to all the classic Hollywood romantics, the Bogart-types with tight, rehearsed lines, and tragic love lives. “And I’ve been so, so fucking _angry_ with you, but it really hurts being angry with you. I want to be happy every time I see you.” John did not say anything, and his stance and expression were softening. He placed a palm on the bench seat and leaned, apparently unconsciously towards Paul. Paul mirrored the action, and enveloped John’s pale hand with his own, relishing the deep electricity which made their skin jump. “I want to do that _thing_ that only you and I can do,” he said, quietly and conspiratorially, lowering his voice more and more, forcing their heads to lean closer towards each other. “when we sing together, or when we sit down together, or when we…” Brown met darker brown, and both colours were awash with need of every description, “Look each other in the eye.”

Their fingers interlocked. Paul was not done speaking, and John generously kept his mouth shut, and his eyes focussed and open – a feat to admire, Paul imagined, for one so pumped with sedative medication. “I want things to be like they used to be, where we didn’t _need_ to think about all this wider-world bullshit,” he said, pulling back a little, and bringing his voice to regular volume. “We didn’t give a shit about reasons or consequences. We just played, did whatever was fun and right at the time, and it was great, and, and,” he hadn’t expected the revelation to reach this part of him, but here he started telling, “I keep having these visions of another future where it didn’t go wrong, and in it we’re… Amazing.”

The image of those half-closed eyes came to his head again, those muffled words of wisdom. But what was _amazing_ music to him? What was the record of truth? Wasn’t the joy simply to see each other smile, and rock out? “We’re amazing,” he breathed, “and revolutionary, and all the stuff you said we were going to be. But we can’t have that, John, I realise that now.” _I don’t want to have it,_ he realised, too, but that was a fact he could not face in words out loud.

John, who had been staring rapt at Paul throughout this, drew back. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. “It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault.” He ran a hand over his face, and his words sounded far sadder than angry. “Did you come to rub me face in it?”

“Fuck, John, no,” Paul cried. “I came here because _you_ wanted to see me.” _And I couldn’t bear another day not seeing you._ “Why do you always have to make things so _difficult?_ This is a bleeding confession here, alright, this wasn’t easy to get out, y’know…”

They were drifting away from each other again; John grabbed Paul’s defensiveness and matched it. “Well, who was ignoring me, huh?” he growled. “When I was _begging_ to talk to you, when I really fucking _needed_ you, where were you?”

Paul remembered John’s crackling voice calling him, day after day, _Paul, talk to me, talk to me, where are you, why won’t you call back?_

He’d heard the words, and they’d cut through him, but he’d kept his ground, because he was angry, because he felt like _he_ was the wronged party. He looked at John now, his paleness, his sunken eyes. He imagined John on his first night out of prison, sitting alone with a stranger, trying to drink the pain away, just like he had done only a fortnight earlier. He never once called him, his best friend. “Shit,” he mumbled. It was a cry for help. How had he not seen that? And now, he’d gone on declaring _love_ for him? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what was he thinking? The churning in his gut was too difficult to ignore, and now he did feel himself shrinking back. How on Earth could he come here expecting John to love him back, after all he’d done? “Oh, shit,” he said again, nauseous. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I was pissed off…” The excuses evaporated, and then Paul saw a little clearer through the onslaught of guilt, remembering that _John_ hadn’t called him either. “But… But you never _told_ me.” Had he? Was there a time in the past days that John had sounded wheezier than usual? Had he once said that he didn’t feel great? Had he once told Paul he _needed_ him? Paul could not remember. “And you never apologised,” he added, pushing past all waves of guilt and rejection, going straight back to his far more comfortable anger.

“Apologised -? It was _you_ who told me not to apologise for the things I did –”

This was just too much. “I don’t mean your _crimes,_ John!” He yelled, shattering their muffled tone, breaking the peace of the park, and not caring one bit. “You _left_ me, you bastard!” Tears were back in his eyes again, sudden and unstoppable. “I didn’t _care_ about you hitting Bob. I didn’t _care_ about you screwing Brian in Spain.” Well, he had cared about that, but not in the way the public had. “Don’t you get it? It was awful for me, too, watching you fall like that, watching _us_ fall like that.”

“You can’t have known what it was like.”

Paul scrubbed his cheeks with his fist. “Maybe not from your end of things. The point is that it was tough for me as well. But I didn’t _care._ All I wanted from you at that time was to be _there,_ ” he heard his voice crack on the word, and hesitated only slightly from the shame. “And you pushed me away like I was everybody else. Like I was just another staring face.” He forced a sob down his throat, like a large pill. “You complain that I ignored you? You _broke us up,_ and then you didn’t call for months – what did you _expect?_ ”

He sniffled, embarrassed, and waited for John to say something. “I,” John started to say, and Paul stayed quiet to allow him space to continue, but he didn’t. He only turned his head away from Paul, which stung. But he still had things that needed to be said; he’d never got to his point. He forced himself to calm down.

“I’m not angry anymore,” Paul sighed. “I tried to be, that’s the thing. I couldn’t keep it up very long. Now I know, I just… Well, I just love you, I suppose. What I said.” It was a sad, hopeless thought, to think he’d realised this too late. Still, it was worth asking. “Do… Do you feel… Oh.” John’s breath shuddered. He still did not look at Paul; he jerked his body to an angle away from him. “You’re crying.”

“No need to tell the world,” John said, before sniffing.

Paul tried to edge closer to John on the bench, moving cautiously as if with a wild animal. “Any particular reason?” This was a long shot, he knew. The last time John had cried in his presence had been some time ago, and he’d refused to tell even him what the reason was. The last time he’d known the reason was after Julia died.

John wiped his face on his arm. “Just. I really fucked up, didn’t I? I thought I was fixing my last screw up, but I was only screwing up even more.” Something laugh-like came out of him. “Just the way I am, I suppose.”

Paul was nearly touching John now, but still he would not look at him. Instead, Paul looked. John was not crying openly, but biting his lip, and catching the tears on his cheeks with one palm. Paul was struck by the sadness of it all; John did not want him to comfort him. That had always been the problem, in a way. “… Tell me why you did it,” he said, making his tone as light and unforceful as he could. “Why did you shut me out? I could have helped you. I _would_ have helped you.”

Finally, blessedly, John lifted his face to look at him. He smiled helplessly at Paul. “That’s just it,” he said. “I _wanted_ you to. I was dying to run off to Paris with you again, to let you make me forget about all the ugly stuff.” His hand was on Paul’s, but Paul could hardly enjoy the physical contact while looking at that awful smiling and desperate face. “But I reckoned I didn’t deserve to do that. I was damned, you know that?” He said it casually, like it was some sort of infection. “And I didn’t want to drag you down with me.”

Paul shook his head. “How could you _think –”_

“They messed with my head.” Paul’s chest went suddenly very cold. “The jury, the press, the… The other inmates.” It was his turn to avoid John’s eyes; he didn’t know where to look. It was a notion horrible enough that he had got by without imagining himself going through it, but now it was inescapable. What on earth was there that he could say now? And the other inmates… He tried to swallow, to wet his dry throat.

“Well… It’s all in the past now.” _Brilliant. Excellent wordsmith you are, Paul McCartney!_ John groaned, but Paul was sure that he did not want to elaborate on his last statement any further. They sat in a legendarily uncomfortable silence for a moment too long, before John revived the conversation.

“Your dreams. Your visions, you call ‘em. They’re bright and colourful, aren’t they?” John gesticulated. “They have those, whatchamacallit. Funny costumes.” A breeze arrived coolly at their bench, running a shiver down Paul’s spine.

“How… How did you…”

“That could have been us,” John breathed, sounding that same flavour of bowled-over and disbelieving that Paul felt, every time he confronted one of the visions. “It _tortures_ you to think what we missed out on, doesn’t it? Imagine how much worse it is, knowing it’s your own fault.”

There was stillness in Strawberry Field. They couldn’t have the life that they once knew again. They would never sit and feed each other fame and glory of big translucent ice cream spoons again. They would never change the world. He accepted that now, but they could have something else. “I don’t care about all that,” Paul said, not sure if it was true then, but knowing that one day it would be. “I care about what happens now, though. And I’d like us to start anew.” He blushed at the phrase, so formal-sounding. All he really wanted was what they’d done in Paris again, and John may not even want that.

John stood up, threw his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out, agitated. “What. What do you mean?”

Paul eased himself off the bench and came up behind his partner. “I mean, let’s try this again. And fuck what everybody else thinks.” He relished saying it, even as he partly recoiled from the words. “We’ve nothing left to lose, have we?”

It seemed to take an age for John to respond. He was staring straight ahead, resolutely not looking at Paul, but quite suddenly his expression twitched into something close to a smile. “Are you sure you want this? You’re no queer.”

 _Queer._ An odd word, so pokey and unimaginative, and, as far as Paul was concerned, an understatement of his – _their,_ he was sure of it – feelings. It had only been a few minutes in John’s presence, and yet every bone in Paul’s body felt lighter than it had in three months. Could that really be described so crudely with the word _queer?_ “I don’t know about any of that, but I know I want you, John. I’ve never been surer about anything. You turn me on, you know,” he added, trying for a smile.

The silence held for a few seconds, as John still looked stony. His face finally cracked into a fully-formed grin; Paul thought his heart might burst from the relief, and joy, and such affection.

“In more ways than one?” John asked.

“Yeah, Johnny.” That was all that mattered. And in Paris, nobody cared. “Anyway, that’s what I want. I understand if you’ve got a thing with... I don’t know, Brian, or something, and I know Cynthia’s still on your mind but –”

“For heaven’s sake, Paul.” There was a distant alcoholic twinge in John’s breath, but his mouth was gentle and tender when he pressed it against Paul’s. Paul eased into it naturally, closing his eyes and receiving the kiss with the quiet satisfaction of reuniting finally with someone long gone. The lateness of the night and the fatigue of twelve ghastly months suddenly fell onto him in a rush; he lost all of his strength, and felt John’s frail hands stop him from falling. He blinked his eyes open, to find John’s still closed. Trusting his weight in John’s arms, Paul brought a hand up to palm his lover’s cheek. “It’s been years,” John said when they parted, “and I’ve never _once_ stopped wanting you.” They leant in to kiss again.

“So,” Paul gasped. “What now?” He remembered with a flush the echo of those words at Walton Prison, and from John’s smirk, so did he. 

“Well,” John drawled. “You said start anew. How about with _hello?_ ”

It hurt his face, Paul’s next smile did. “Hello to you too, John Lennon.” They stood there for a few moments, doing nothing but arming together and grinning like fools, until a sound from the trees distracted them.

“Listen to that,” John said, cupping a hand to his ear. “What’s a bird doing twittering at this hour?”

It was unfair to call that complex melody twittering, when pigeons and tits peppered the trees with their own uninspired chirps and coos. The night bird sang in arpeggios, in journeys. “Oh.” John looked back at him.

“What is it?”

Up, up and up, down, down and down. That was the essence of it. Climbing and rising, falling and sinking. “It’s just, I remembered my song.” He rested his head on John’s shoulder, and John made a soft noise of interest.

“You bring a guitar up to Liverpool?”

“No,” Paul said, speaking softly. “Mike has one, though.”

“That’s good,” John’s head came down to rest on Paul’s. He felt its trusting weight vibrate as he added, “We’ll be needing that.”

In the dead of night they were, listening to the music of it. Paul’s eyes flitted to the sky, where they found Venus glimmering again, an untwinkling and unbroken shine, indicating something real and almost tangible. They would write together again, Paul decided, and the comfort of it settled warmly in his belly. So what if John and he lived in different parts of the country now, so what if John was at the docks? They would find a way around all of that. They’d have to. They would be queer, perhaps, or they would be something else, but whatever happened, they would always sing.

“Sing me something,” Paul whispered into John’s shoulder. He felt the change in John’s head as he smiled and began to chant words, so softly and languidly that their melody was nearly indeterminable. Still, Paul listened for it, dutifully. _If I fell in love with you,_ the words began, and Paul followed them step by step, until he knew the two of them were in perfect synchronisation once more. Without his realising, his fingers intertwined with John’s had begun to tap the rhythm against his hand; he noticed this only when the beat was returned. The soundless touch was its own music for them as the world at large started to vanish. It seemed, unlike everything else on their planet, confident, unrelenting and very much alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally going to have 2 chapters for this, and the second was going to be John's point of view of the events leading up to chapter 1 (and who knows MAYBE a chapter 3 but that was always unlikely) but this took SO LONG. Definitely the hardest thing I've tried to write, structually. If people like this and want to see the John side of things, I'll get on that second chapter - but understand it will take a long time, because I'm pretty new at this whole "not writing short stories of about 2000 words in length" shebang. (also my understanding of legal processes is... limited, but i will try)  
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!!


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